"Not much. Someone went off. You know, like, wanting to execute a one-man invasion of Kuwait. Ended up getting himself and some other poor bastard killed."
"Anything else, like names or anything?" Shannie asked.
"Nope. Just knew it happened. Tainted a miserable week." Meany said.
"Thanks again," Shannie said. We went in search of Captain Mulberry.
Mulberry was a squat, fireplug of a man, whose shoulders were as broad as his legs were high. He wore a square, concrete jaw. Shannie said it was the result of a cinder block implant. A pug nose jutted outwards encasing his mouth between twin peaks. Even when he didn't speak, his mouth rippled like a windblown lake. His voice was deep and cavernous. His gray eyes were like a lighthouse's searchlight, constantly scanning the coast in front of him.
"Soon as I saw him, I had the urge to punch his jaw," I told Shannie.
"Lucky you didn't. You would have broke your hand."
When he moved, his cockiness vanished. He didn't walk, he rolled. His legs moved too fast for his body, giving him the appearance of perpetual stumble.
He towered over Shannie by a mere two inches and outweighed her by a hundred pounds. Except for their height, they were complete opposites. Shannie, graceful and delicate, precise as a scalpel; Mulberry, clumsy and coarse, blunt as a sledgehammer, its no wonder they only saw eye to eye standing face to face.
"I need to talk to you," Shannie said.
A corner of the Captain's mouth rose into a smile, his eyes paraded up and down Shannie. "Who are you?" Mulberry sneered.
"I want to know what," Shannie began.
"I can do for you?" Mulberry jeered, cutting off Shannie.
"Kind of. Tell me what you…" Shannie said before being interrupted again.
"Tell you what I can do for you? And how I'm going to do it," The captain said. Uh oh, I thought. The fool doesn't know what he's getting into.
"Wow, we have ourselves a live one," Shannie scoffed.
"Wouldn't you love to find out." Mulberry's sneer widened, his concrete jaw erect in front of him.
"Yo Napoleon, I didn't come here to listen to your fantasies. Take them up with your sister."
"My, my, I think you're the live wire," the captain crowed.
"Cut the shit! Tell me what you know about the fratricide in the Wadi-Al-Batin!"
The condescending smile vanished from the Captain's face. "Don't know nothing bout no fratricide. Got the wrong outfit babe."